ABSTRACT
The distinction between “revealed teachings” (kengy2 顕教) and “secret teachings” (mikky2 密教) is often assumed to be a crucial element in the classification of currents of Japanese Buddhism. Undoubtedly such a division was historically made, and the positioning of mikky2 as a category apart was the hermeneutical strategy that allowed it to pronounce the esoteric (or Tantric)1 teaching as a superior form of Buddhism. This operation may arguably be the starting point of a process of “esoterization” of Japanese religion, which took place beyond the sectarian and doctrinal dimensions, and which became a characteristic of Japanese culture vis-à-vis other East Asian contexts, where the esoteric model was apparently not prominent. Yet, if we were to sketch the relation of “esoteric Buddhism” to its other, that is, “non-esoteric” Buddhism, we would find ourselves representing an idiom of intersection and reciprocal borrowing rather than opposition. After K5kai 空海 (774-835) established mikky2 as a “bibliographic category,”2 throughout the mid-Heian period and well into the mediaeval era Buddhist scholiasts often referred to the distinction between kengy2 and mikky2 as a basic taxonomy of Buddhism, similar to the division Mah4y4na/H+nay4na. This suggests that the term “secret teaching” was not so much used in the sense of hermetic knowledge reserved for a few, but rather more broadly, to indicate one type of mainstream Buddhism available to practitioners, albeit with its own principles and conventions. Moreover, in the mediaeval period, while the two categories continued to be used, the distinction between them seems to have rested on rhetorical grounds, losing strength at both the doctrinal and the liturgical levels, where more parallels were argued and more interactions occurred.
